Operators of commuter transportation often provide communication services to their customers while on-board the transportation vehicles. For example, airline operators may provide internet access, telephone services, and real-time television and radio to their passengers during in-flight travel. These communication services are often provided via communication satellites. That is, the transportation vehicles may be equipped with equipment to communicate with the communication satellites and accordingly provide communication services to the on-board customers during travel. For example, an airplane may be equipped to communicate with the AsiaSat 3S satellite by Asia Satellite Telecommunications, which provides communication coverage to Asia and Australasia, when travelling within the coverage area of the AsiaSat 3S satellite. Similarly, an airplane may be equipped to communicate with the Telesat ANIK F-2 satellite by TeleSat Canada, which provides communication coverage to portions of North America, when travelling within the coverage area of the Telesat ANIK F-2 satellite.
Communication satellites are generally designed to provide communication coverage for non-mobile terminals and within a fixed area. Accordingly, transportation vehicles, such as airplanes, often need to be equipped with complex equipment in order to provide communication services via communication satellites to their customers. The installation and service of the complex equipment results in higher costs to the operators that are often passed on to their customers when utilizing the communication services. For example, certain U.S. airline operators may charge customers up to $13.00 per domestic flight trip for the usage of on-board internet services. Additionally, the characteristics of the communication satellites may provide limitations on the design of the equipment on the airplanes to receive effective communication coverage (for example, there may be adjacent satellite interference). This reduces the performance of the communication services during travel providing for a poor user experience for customers.
Airline operators have adopted other systems beyond communication satellites to provide on-board communication services. For example, airline operators have equipped airplanes to communicate with transceiver base station towers operated by a third-party to provide communication services. An example of such a third-party is Gogo. However, communication services provided by such systems also suffer from poor performance due to design limitations. For example, the on-board internet connection speed provided by the Gogo network is typically less than 500 kilobits per second (kbps) for downloading and 300 kbps for uploading.
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